Monday, November 9, 2009

GREEN APPLE EMPLOYEES ALLOWED FULL USE OF THE LANE

I ride my bike to work every day. I have no excuse not to. The weather too temperate in San Francisco, the scenery too attractive to squint at out of a filthy MUNI line window. Despite maniac motorists, streets in disrepair, ridiculous bike plan injunctions (thank you Rob Anderson), and that one time my landlord ran a stop sign and almost accidentally ran me over in his jeep (seriously), I ride my bike to work every day and I love it. I'm not the only one either. Green Apple boasts a staff with a sizable number of bicycle enthusiasts, not to mention a large selection of books on cycling, from repair to racing to world travel.

Above are just a few of our highly recommended selections, books we have here on display, books that we've read, loved, and been inspired to hop on our bikes and ride around by. I personally cannot push Major enough (Major Taylor also pictured up top), in which Todd Balf paints a grim picture of the cycling world long before the remote semblance of equality that exists today. David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries and Dervla Murphy's Full Tilt are enough to make a person want to abandon the rhetoric of modern society, take back their dignity and lean in to a pair of drop bars. Lastly Eve Titus' Anatole isn't specifically about bikes, though a bicycle is the titular character's prime form of transit. I mostly included it 'cause, gosh, how cute is that illustration? Keep chargin' Anatole, ya' little champ you!

Alfred Jarry, inventor of pseudoscience pataphysics and dada author of the Pere Ubu plays would famously ride nude though Paris with his face painted green in celebration of his birthdays.Einstein enjoying what looks like a pretty playful ride to me... you'd think a genius level intellect would ride a bike that's a little closer to his size, but hey, he probably knows something I don't!

Henry Miller loved his bike so much he wrote a book about it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.